His ear for music helped tune U.N. message

Last November, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations stood beneath the soaring dome of the U.N. General Assembly and tried to explain to a global audience why it would be wrong to award formal recognition to the state of Palestine.

The U.N. was poised to cast a historic vote, possibly declaring the Palestinians a non-member observer state. The designation would confer greater diplomatic status and enable Palestinians to challenge Israel in international tribunals.

The Israelis were against it, and their U.N. ambassador said so in direct terms:

"The Palestinian leadership has never recognized that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. ... Don't let history record that today the U.N. helped (the Palestinians) on their march of folly."

Israel lost the vote that day, 138 nations to nine. But the ambassador's speech resonated. It was quoted internationally – on television, social media and in newspapers.

Which is another way of saying the words of Nathan Miller, just a few years removed from studying jazz at Orange County School of the Arts, were heard around the world.

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For the past three years, during one of Israel's most tumultuous periods on the world stage, the Jewish nation has addressed global diplomats using the words of a man who once played Christmas tree-lighting ceremonies at Fashion Island, a man who credits his musical training with giving him an ear for the rhythms of persuasive speech.

Miller stepped down in January from his post as the chief speechwriter for the Israeli mission to the United Nations. He recently has returned to Southern California to start a communications business.

But during his tenure at the U.N., Miller, 27, shaped Israel's global voice on matters ranging from Palestinian statehood to Israeli military incursions in Gaza to the uprisings of the Arab Spring.

It was, Miller said, a job filled with "responsibility and awe," especially after that Nov. 29 speech on Palestinian statehood, when people called from Israel saying things like "I cried when I watched that speech."

Miller says it was also, in a deeper sense, a musical job.

"A big part of speech writing is understanding the cadence of the sentence. And that's very musical, understanding how that sentence is going to flow."

Miller represents an increasingly rare strain in American Judaism, a young person who staunchly defends Israel in the face of international criticism of the Jewish state's foreign policy.

A 2007 survey of American Jews found that "young adult Jews were less attached to Israel than any other living generation of Jewish adults," according to The Forward, a national Jewish newspaper.

Miller graduated from OCSA in 2003 and briefly considered a musical career. But his Jewish identity, strengthened "from understanding the amazing contributions that Jews have made to the world," steered him in a different direction.

A decade later, he was being lauded as an invaluable contributor to Israeli diplomacy by Ron Prosor, the Israeli U.N. ambassador.

"When the chips are down, Nate is someone you want in the room," Prosor said in an emailed statement. "He is invaluable for me in finding the words to voice Israel's message."

Miller is the oldest of five siblings. He grew up in Palos Verdes. His parents were doctors, his father an emergency room physician, his mother a radiologist.

"Our house wasn't particularly religious," said Miller's mother, Julie. Yet Miller "always had a very strong allegiance to Israel."

In elementary school Miller argued with a teacher who printed a class calendar with the words "Easter Break."

"He said, 'You can't say that. I'm Jewish,'" Julie Miller recalled.

In sixth grade Miller took up the bass. He began jamming with his siblings, who all played instruments. At their parents' urging, the kids formed a band called Underage. They played birthday parties and community events. They got a write-up in the local newspaper.

Miller enrolled at Peninsula High School in Rolling Hills. But he was unsatisfied with the school's music program. A friend told him about the then-named Orange County High School for the Arts and, after a tryout, Miller was accepted into the jazz program.

Every day, after finishing academic classes at Peninsula, Miller loaded his upright bass into the bed of an old GMC Sonoma pickup and drove an hour to Santa Ana, where he anchored the school's top jazz combo. Often he stayed, practicing or playing gigs, until 9 or 10 at night.

"He was the glue who held the rhythm section together," said Bijon Watson, who founded and led the school's jazz program.

Watson believed Miller was good enough to make a living as a musician. He also believed Miller wouldn't do that.

"When he had a comment it was very thoughtful and put together. He never said random things."

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Even in high school Miller was drawn to history and politics. He majored in history at UCLA and remained at the school to earn a master's degree in public policy.

Two events during this period propelled Miller away from music. When he was 18 he spent a month in Israel courtesy of the nation's Birthright program, which funds trips to Israel for any Jew age 18 to 26.

Then, during graduate school, Miller spent six months interning for a think tank in Brussels. Miller said he was shocked at the prevalence of negative attitudes toward Israel in Europe.

"It was at the height of Iraq War and there was a lot I saw there that was deeply disturbing," Miller said.

After returning to California, Miller got a call from a friend in Brussels saying the Israeli mission to the U.N. was looking for a speechwriter. Miller thought it was a "long shot." He applied and was hired in September 2010.

Miller arrived at the U.N. at a pivotal time for Israel. Two months after he started work, the first Arab uprising began in Tunisia. The following year the government of Egypt fell. Months later, the Israeli military attacked targets in Gaza.

Every one of these events required up-to-the-minute responses at the U.N. On the day Israeli soldiers began retaliating against missile strikes fired from Gaza, Miller had 45 minutes to craft a speech that would explain Israel's actions to the world.

"The world is on fire all the time for Israel at the U.N.," said Mark Lagon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.

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Miller's startup communications business – so far "my office is my smartphone and local Starbucks," he said – will focus, at least initially, on strengthening ties between Israel and American business and nonprofit leaders.

He still has his bass and plays sometimes, including with former members of the family band. Two of Miller's siblings are professional musicians, one at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, the other at USC. His other two siblings are a county prosecutor in Fresno and a student at Yale.

"I know I'll have jobs in the future where the pay is better, and the hours are shorter, and the weather is warmer," Miller told U.N. colleagues in his farewell address.

"But nothing will be the same as waking up every day to represent the state of Israel alongside the people here this evening."